Monday, July 9, 2018

Monday's Shoot - Leah

Today is the final day of my nine day vacation. It's back to work tomorrow and I feel like these nine days have a hot mess of changed plans and things not quite working out. Why would today's shoot with Leah be any different?Right off the bat, I want to say that none of what went wrong today was Leah's fault. We just caught some bad breaks and I was legitimately getting angry. Leah kept assuring me all was okay, but it truly made me feel bad.When I drove to her apartment to start the day off, my GPS had no clue which court was hers. I drove past her place and around the bend. I had to double back around and look for Leah, who told me she'd come out and flag me down. I wish that was the worst of the roadblocks we ran into today.I brought a pink nail polish with me that I recently picked up. Leah wanted to use it, so after I picked her up, she went about painting her toes while we talked about some ideas for sets. One of those ideas was one I came up with while sitting in the car. Right in front of us was a park and I could see a path leading down to a pier. In view, behind the pier, was a train bridge that I thought would make for a cool background. She said we could shoot there, but first, I promised Leah that we'd run to Dunkin Donuts for some coffee. And wouldn't you know it, the credit card systems were down. We left without it and decided to head back to her apartment and shoot the set on the pier real quick.After parking and walking down to the pier, we quickly noticed that the sun wasn't in the best spot to get the bridge in the background. We could have still used the pier as a location, but decided to try it another time instead. On to our next location, after stopping at another Dunkin Donuts, of course.Like Alice's shoot yesterday (see blog: "Sunday's Shoot - Alice"), I had wanted to visit a location I had used before. We made our way downtown and drove over to this spot that features a large water fountain and statue combination. One problem, though - the water fountain was turned off. We pondered shooting the set anyhow, but ultimately decided that a water fountain without water is kind of a waste. We decided that we'll try to come back down in the near future to test our luck again. Since I had paid for parking for a few hours, we decided to go ahead and walk over to Baltimore's Inner Harbor. I know there's a lot of touristy stuff around, so nice backgrounds should be plentiful - and they were. We just faced other issues each and every spot we tried to use. Whether it was the sun's location not working in our favor, wind blowing her hair all over the place, the walls of a fountain being way too hot for her to sit upon, benches being way too small to use for poses, or just people being right over our shoulders, it happened to us. This was the point where I was seriously getting mad. It made it worse too because Leah was really looking forward to our shoot today, and I knew that. I felt like I was letting her down. She kept trying to tell me that it was okay and we can walk around and try somewhere else. The thing is, she had to be back to go to work by 5 p.m., and I was trying to keep that in mind. It was at that point, we decided to head back to the car, leave the city, and see what we could find closer to home.During our walk back to the car, Leah pointed out that we could walk behind one of the restaurants and see what was back there. Each of the piers in the Inner Harbor have different tourist attractions surrounding them and this one featured a large lighthouse - one I had used in the background of one of Aliza's sets years ago. That's when we spotted a large resting/seating area by the water. Leah walked straight to it and I followed.Leah sat down and I gave things a look through the camera. I told her that this would actually work. The set would have a city/urban background instead of some touristy attraction like we had been trying to include up to this point. She gave me a few test poses for me to confirm that we were good. Now we were finally getting to shoot a full fledged set, not just the few test shots I did at several of the other locations up to this point. Nope! This time, Leah's shoes were coming completely off and we didn't care who the saw us.

It took us so much time to finally land a spot to shoot while we were downtown.

Having walked around the city for a little while at this point, I know Leah was in the mood to get her shoes off her feet. She wasn't wearing any socks, at my request, and I knew her feet had to have been getting sweaty. It was about 90 degrees, sunny, and her shoes, like her outfit, were all black. With all that being true, Leah still kept the shoes on for a number of shots to start this one off.Eventually, Leah began pulling off her shoes, starting with one, and then the other. It was during these shots when we noticed we clearly being watched. Leah saw a couple of women walk by and turn around to look back at us. Then, behind her, I could see some of the guys working at the concert venue looking across the water at us too. Naturally, Leah got playful and starting doing splits and smelling her shoes. She gave no f's about what anyone thought. She loves attention given to her feet, so the more the better. I probably should have put the camera down and just rubbed her feet, while sitting down below her for a bit while we were here. Damn... How about a very public foot rub next time, Leah?Once we wrapped up this set, it was time to head back to the car. I had only paid for so long on the meter, so we decided to try to stop somewhere else on the way home to shoot, maybe even on that pier. Back to her apartment we went.After we arrived, wouldn't you know it, the pier was occupied by a bunch of people. There were a few kids, someone fishing, and some other person just sitting there. I guess this one was just not meant to be today. That's when we decided to drive around locally and see what we could find, since we were running out of time. We went to a few parks and a neighborhood not too far from hers to see if we could spot that bridge from another spot. No such luck with either. Today, well this week honestly, seems like it was just not meant to be for me. Leah and I called it a day after doing only one set, which kind of sucked. Still, we are going to try to see if we can catch up with one another in the next few days. I'm looking forward to it and even promised her a much better foot rub than the one I gave her after she painted her toes in my car. I can't wait for the photos, or the rubs, so be on the lookout for more Leah soon.

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A number of the Soles of Silk models have their very own Instagram and Twitter accounts where fans can reach them. Please feel free to let them know how much you enjoyed their work here, but above all else, please be respectful. If you don't see a model on the lists below, they do not have accounts set up to be reached. For those models, please forward any comments to the main Soles of Silk accounts.

Wu's Feet Links Feature Sets, Interviews, & Columns

Back in 2005, only a few short months after Soles of Silk debut, Carmen became the first model to represent the site as a Wu's Feet Links feature model. I was deeply honored that Wu would ask me to take part in this prestigious section on his site. What I didn't know, however, was that he'd ask me to do so over and over again - each time with different models from Soles of Silk. My models have always been flattered to be picked to do these sets and I've always made sure to do some of my best work with each and every one of them.

After Wu's passing in 2014, I made sure the feature section would be a top priority in rebooting his site - Olivia's "Back to Business" site saw the relaunch of that section. Below you will find each and every set ever to be featured on Wu's Feet Links from Soles of Silk. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed shooting them.

In addition to the feature sets, two more items I decided to reboot was the Interviews and Columns sections. With the success of blogs today, I decided it would be a wise move to take those sections and create blogs for each one. I moved over all the interviews and columns from the past and have since taken over conducting/writing both. Below you will also find any interviews and/or columns that predominately feature one of the Soles of Silk models. (Note: A couple of the interviews listed are with models who either run, or at one time, ran their own sites and/or clips stores. These models also posed for Soles of Silk, so I decided to feature them here as well.)